The relationship between autobiographical memory and emotion is intensively studied. However, how emotional autobiographical memories (AMs) are retrieved and whether recall processes change across the lifespan have received little empirical attention. Therefore, in the present study, we applied an adult lifespan perspective to examine which retrieval mechanisms are active during the recall of emotional AMs. A total of 364 participants aged between 18 and 89 years recalled up to ten positive and up to ten negative AMs. They provided their age at the time of each event and rated each memory according to its centrality to their identity and life story. Based on linear growth models, we found that the recall of emotional AMs is not only shaped by a chronological recall order; people also tend to order their emotional AMs along the relative importance of AMs by starting with their most central positive, respectively negative memory. Notably, the extent to which AMs show a chronological order effect as well as a centrality order effect varies between individuals of different ages: Whereas the chronological order effect associated with the recall of positive and negative AMs became more pronounced with increasing age, the reversed pattern was found regarding the centrality order effect for negative AMs. Positive AMs were also ordered along their centrality, but the strength of this effect was independent of participants’ age. Findings are discussed in terms of potential motivational factors that underly the retrieval mechanisms associated with the recall of positive and negative AMs and age-related differences therein.